118 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS 



of the course and powers of Nature, to which his attention 

 had never been directed during his school-Hfe, and to learn, 

 for the first time, what a world of facts lies outside and be- 

 yond the world of words. I appeal to those who know 

 what engineering is, to say how far I am right in respect 

 to that profession; but with regard to another, of no less 

 importance, I shall venture to speak of my own knowledge. 

 There is no one of us who may not at any moment be thrown, 

 bound hand and foot by physical incapacity, into the hands 

 of a medical practitioner. The chances of life and death 

 for all and each of us may, at any moment, depend on the 

 skill with which that practitioner is able to make out what 

 is wrong in our bodily frames, and on his ability to apply 

 the proper remedy to the defect. 



The necessities of modern life are such, and the class from 

 which the medical profession is chiefly recruited is so situ- 

 ated, that few medical men can hope to spend more than 

 three or four, or it may be five, years in the pursuit of those 

 studies which are immediately germane to physic. How is 

 that all too brief period spent at present ? I speak as an old 

 examiner, having served some eleven or twelve years in that 

 capacity in the University of London, and therefore having a 

 practical acquaintance with the subject; but I might fortify 

 myself by the authority of the President of the College of 

 Surgeons, Mr. Quain, whom I heard the other day in an 

 admirable address (the Hunterian Oration) deal fully and 

 wisely with this very topic. ^ 



1 Mr. Quain's words {Medical Times and Gazette, February 20) 

 are: — "A few words as to our special Medical course of instruction 

 and the influence upon it of such changes in the elementary schools as 

 I have mentioned. The student now enters at once upon several 

 sciences — physics, chemistry, anatomy, physiology, botany, pharmacy, 

 therapeutics — all these, the facts and the language and the laws of 

 each, to be mastered in eighteen months. Up to the beginning of the 



